"Everybody in this body knows that the American people want us to do something about the jobs crisis. What Republicans have been saying is that raising taxes on business owners isn't the way to do it."

Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans agrily charge that government does not create jobs. Only the private sector creates jobs. This is ridiculous. Governments provide real and valuable services to people who pay for them with real and valuable dollars. And real and valuable people do the work... until those governments get starved, the workers all get laid off, and the services stop being provided.

Mitch McConnell's cynical and callous attitude toward the unemployed stems from more than his single-minded focus on bringing down the duly elected president of the United States of America. Those segments of society hardest hit by high unemployment didn't vote for Republicans even before they were unemployed.

Mitch McConnell talks about the 1.5 million jobs lost since President Obama's inauguration and he shamelessly says the stimulus didn't work. What he doesn't tell you are that more Americans are working than when Obama took office or that without the stimulus, unemployment would be over 11% instead of stubbornly hovering about 9.1%.

Citizens will take to the streets Wednesday in Louisville, Lexington, and Jeffersonville, Indiana to tell Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, and Representatives John Yarmuth, Ben Chandler, Todd Young that what America needs now is jobs, not cuts.

The worst thing about the collapsing stock market is that stock prices are leading indicators of economic performance. Employment is a lagging indicator. That means we're likely in for more trouble, and lots of it.

Sources are telling Louisville.com that 50 employees have been laid off at the Louisville Courier Journal, in what seems to be a nationwide two percent staff reduction by the Courier's parent company Gannett.